Collections Redux: The Public Library as a Place of Community Borrowing

This article presents an overview of the Western public library’s development into its present form(s) and its shift to the prevailing social perspective. This leads to a discussion of “digital and point-oh libraries” as one of two major strands and “social space and place” as the other. Our main critique is that this development has caused an unfortunate downplay of societal perspectives in favor of a focus on social issues. Another side effect is a growing lack of attention to the potential of physical, on-site collections. By proposing a specific counterexample, we discuss library collections as a community concern and as a step toward bridging the social-societal gap. The potential of a redefined on-site collection is set against the backdrop of public libraries offering nontraditional collections, such as tool-lending libraries.